9/4/09

Last week many of the DC area restaurants offered a special menu for Restaurant Week. Last Friday, for Laura's early birthday dinner, I joined her and her other 3 friends for dinner at Ruth's Chris. The place was nicely decorated, but people wore everything from shorts and tshirts to cocktail wear. We fit somewhere in the middle. Drinks in hand (I ordered a black cherry martini forgetting that I hate fake black cherry flavor), we were seated and greeted by our waiter: he proceeded to address us as mademoiselles the entire night.

For the first course I ordered tomato soup with lobster. The portion size was quite substantial, there was definitely plenty of crab in the soup and enough flavor. The only change I would have made was to add a bit of creme.

My other dining companions weren't as lucky. Theresa's salad came with dressing on the salad instead on the side as she had asked. The waiter pretended not to hear her and left. She had to get his attention several times before her order was corrected. Danielle received a completely different salad from what she had ordered. I'm not sure if we were being treated off-handed because we are all women, or because everyone (other than me) at the table was 25 years old (not that we behaved inappropriately at all).

For the entree we all ordered 6 oz steak (I can't remember what cut) with a few shrimp, and I had mashed potatoes. The plates were sizzling hot and the smell of butter surrounded us instantaneously. The meat was perfectly cooked (medium rare) and I even managed to leave half of it to take home.

I'm afraid that mashed potatoes were not (gasp!!!) made from scratch. That was quite disappointing, but they were still pretty good. Again, I took half of them home. I must thank Danielle for this because she decided to take half of her food home: otherwise, I would have finished everything on my plate.

And then there was dessert! We had a sweet custard with fresh fruit and chocolate mousse in a chocolate cup. Dreamy!

Sorry for the quality of photographs: the lighting was rather harsh and I'm not quite ready to start bringing my own lamps to restaurants just yet ;)

All in all it was a great dinner. Our waiter, however, thought we did not cover the bill and ran after us as we were leaving the restaurant. Not surprisingly, he was mistaken.

oh man, i hate waiters who are hard to get when you have something wrong with your food. because then you have to wait. still, looks like a very cool meal. i've never been to ruth's chris, but they have them here in ATL to try.

wait staff can make or break a place....will not be visiting RC, have almost walked through the door several times, glad I didn't. None of the food looks as innovative or delectable as some of the other DC places you have reviewed.